


eat your gods

by badbrains



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Derek-centric, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Slash, the internal look at derek’s character that we all deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29392569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badbrains/pseuds/badbrains
Summary: The worst thing to do when you have nothing, is curl your fingers around any and every semblance ofsomething. And that is exactly what Derek did. He traipsed around Beacon Hills, strode with a gait that hinted at a confidence, an air of inherent authority, a complete instinctual autonomy that he had never possessed for one second of his goddamn life. He bit three teenagers who knew less about loss at sixteen than he did, but still enough to keep them suspended far away from anyone else in that god forsaken town. He became who he never wanted to be. Loss turns everyone into what they fear most, he supposes.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	eat your gods

**Author's Note:**

> um. hi. this is part two of me ignoring my wip in favor of writing what i want LMAO
> 
> ok so, this is just something i wanted to do because i felt like we deserved to see more of derek's, like, grief and his overall processing of trauma and stuff. or, i suppose, lack thereof. basically, as a character, he deserved a lot more justice. they all did. and i believe that if we had gotten to see the reasoning behind his feelings, no one would have any problems with his character. 
> 
> that being said, this is very sad. i had phoebe bridgers' _stranger in the alps_ album on repeat while i worked on this so .... fbksdhksdhsk and i _defnitely_ hurt my own feelings while writing it, so take from that what you will. also, i am discovering that pre-slash might be my niche. i like writing it so much more than fics where i directly display their romantic relationship. i think this way it is truer to canon and keeps the flow how it needs to be. 
> 
> also - quick little note, i usually (when i write this type of stuff) have cora remain dead. so, canonically, since this is partly post-nogitsune, derek would know cora is not dead. but i keep her dead for the _angst_ of it all fjsodjskdj
> 
> no beta + the title is inspired by a line from margaret atwood's _eating snake_
> 
> thank you so much to em for letting me send her basically this entire thing in little snippet intervals. i love u so much !!!!

_All peoples are driven_

_to the point of eating their gods_

_after a time: it’s the old greed_

_for a plateful of outer space, that craving for darkness_

_the lust to feel what it does to you_

_when your teeth meet in divinity, in the flesh_

_when you swallow it down_

_and you can see with its own cold eyes_

_look out through murder._

  
  
  
  
  
  


The worst thing about losing everyone you love, Derek thinks, is the expectations thrust upon you by those who did not love them like you did. 

When Derek stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Laura under the blistering sun, squinting against the shine to stare straight ahead at peeling tree bark rather than the four linear piles of fresh dirt, he didn’t know. He didn’t know that death in a town like Beacon Hills is an invitation to seek grandeur in others’ misery. He didn’t know that he would no longer be able to go to the grocery store, a gallon of milk tarnished by strangers looking at him as though he is going to crack apart. Leave pieces they can pick up and trade off like souvenirs - _this is from the day he finally gave in._ He can no longer walk the public trail around the preserve without the air reeking with trepidation, anticipation, everyone waiting for him to snap. Because how can you lose everything and still be okay? How can it not drive you mad? He can no longer order at a restaurant without the owner fumbling to give him a discount, to make his meal free, to _Is there anything else I can get you? Anything at all?_ him to fucking death. If he would have known then that it would be like that, he would have made it five piles. 

They expected him to come apart at the seams, to unravel. They craved it. And when neither he nor Laura gave them the satisfaction, they waited eager by their mailboxes, scoured the obituaries for the next person to fall martyr to mourning. 

New York was a welcomed change of pace. No one knew them, no one waited for them to crumble. Laura was supposed to be Alpha, and while she learned everything she knew from Talia, she was not studying to be a mother. Derek could tell that it ate away at her, but he was bitter, too. They both wanted a mom, both tried to grasp at something within each other. They never talked about it, but some nights Derek would clatter his cutlery against the table a little harder than necessary, and Laura would slam her bedroom door, and they both knew. Even if the house didn’t reek like grief, they would have known. Anyone would have. 

But, then again, sometimes Derek would hear pattering in the hall and his heart raced with flashes of Cora, her hair matted in her sleep-soft face while she tiptoed across the hall to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. But everyone heard her. They always did. So, Derek would stare at the moonlight on his wall and his heart would pound and pound, construct an intravenous lament for a person who did not deserve to die. Perhaps more than any of the others. He would hear the pattering, and his door would creak open, and his room would flood full of the cold feeling of Laura’s hurt. He would continue facing the wall, but he’d scoot over, pull the covers back and create a space big enough for her to slip into. He would keep his eyes away while she breathed on his neck. Then, her throat would click on a swallow and she would say, “I’m not afraid.” Because when she would slip into their parents’ bed, the walls still rattling with nightmare-screams, that is what she would insist. Still just a prideful kid, even with tear-soaked cheeks. So, she would crawl under the sheets beside him, and she would whisper that into the space between them, and Derek would breathe a soft reply: _I am not afraid, either._ And neither of them would mention how their hearts skipped. 

Eventually, Derek stopped banging forks and Laura stopped slamming doors. Gradually, the space on the other side of Derek’s bed stayed vacant all night. Every night. Rendering him cold and alone while the floorboards in the hall still creaked with the patters. Just him and the light filtering through the curtains. It had to be like this, though. At some point they had to learn to heal on their own. Had to learn to hear it, because they would be hearing it forever. 

They never talked about Peter. But, each of them, in their own way, felt a guilty concoction of relief over the fact that he remained in Beacon Hills, was stowed away in one of the best care facilities they had to offer. They could barely stand the reminder that one another posed, Laura looked too much like Talia and Derek looked too much like home. If Peter were there, wasting away beside them, he does not think they would have lasted as long. 

Then, Laura returned to Beacon Hills, and Derek spent a month alone, paired with two straight weeks of his calls going to voicemail, before he stood in the rain while she marked grave number five. 

She was cut in half, severed like a fucking animal. He remembers huffing a laugh at that, curled over himself under the looming walls of his charred home, an _animal._ He guesses in some ways, they were right, huh. Derek’s eyes never turned red, though. Laura rotted in the ground and Derek still blinked blue, eyes glowing cerulean, marking him as a killer. He flashed them in the mirror, every day, several times a day, waiting for _killer_ to shift into _leader._ It never happened. But, what did Derek know about that? He was never destined to be Alpha in the first place. So, his eyes remained blue and he remained okay with it. Because if he weren’t okay, he would have splintered into pieces, and there was no one left to pick him up. 

Following that, when Derek was certain he had met the lowest of lows, so so undeniably sure that he had sunk into the abyss and scraped his heels against the bottom, dragged his feet where no one else had ever tread, he lost Peter to power.

He finally, truly, had nothing. 

The worst thing to do when you have nothing, is curl your fingers around any and every semblance of _something_. And that is exactly what Derek did. He traipsed around Beacon Hills, strode with a gait that hinted at a confidence, an air of inherent authority, a complete instinctual autonomy that he had never possessed for one second of his goddamn life. He bit three teenagers who knew less about loss at sixteen than he did, but still enough to keep them suspended far away from anyone else in that god forsaken town. He became who he never wanted to be. Loss turns everyone into what they fear most, he supposes. 

Now, at nearly twenty-four, he is bordering on a decade of firsthand experience with dying as much as one can while remaining alive. Derek has come to witness so many things morph the people around him into versions of himself. Isaac walks with his shoulders slumped, each of them weighted with the absence of the fresh-faced kids who turned four fucked up people into the beginnings of a pack. The first one Derek had since the fire and the first one Isaac had since his brother died overseas. 

Scott walks with his back straight, his smile sure; makes moves with a confidence that Derek once harnessed, a confidence that marched him into a grown woman’s trap. Scott thinks Derek is out to get him, but in reality, Derek is just selfish. No one can blame him for trying to keep a bright-eyed teenager away from the Argents. He doesn’t want Scott to be carved into a husk, to turn away from his reflection, to hate himself so deeply that pain becomes comfort. Hurt becomes revenge. He doesn’t want Scott to be like him. But, like anyone else his age, Scott believes he knows what is best for himself. What’s best for the people around him. So, as long as they are all alive, Derek supposes it would not kill him to indulge the kid. Maybe if someone had let Derek know that he did not need to be who he carefully constructed himself to be at sixteen, perhaps none of them would be here at all. 

Then, there is Stiles. 

There is so much to Stiles Stilinski that is exactly like Derek, yet nothing like him at all. He stood, sharp-faced and soft-spoken, and he looked Derek directly in his eyes, told him that he is not an abomination. Even though he hates what werewolves have turned his life into, he doesn’t hate werewolves. Which has always left Derek with a reluctant sort of admiration - he knows, if he were in Stiles’ place, he would have already killed them all ten times over. But Derek has always been one for extremes. Stiles’ heart hammers so hard with fear sometimes, Derek finds _himself_ scared, afraid that the organ may very well beat straight through his chest, the friction eroding his bones until it breaks free. Their experiences are interwoven; somewhere in the same cemetery that is home to five of the Hales, there is a tombstone honoring Claudia Stilinski. Both of their names fertilize the town’s soil, and that has to count for something. 

Stiles does the research, the intellectual heavy lifting. Stiles does the rescuing, the selfless saving, elects himself to be the symbol of reckless human martyrdom. Stiles provides the snark, kickstarts the banter, encourages lightheartedness in his pursuit of equal-opportunity mockery.

When Derek thinks of pack _,_ he thinks of Stiles first.

The same is to be said, now, for when Derek thinks of death.

The Nogitsune is something all of them have to live with. Stiles still shakily counts his fingers, stares straight ahead with unfocused eyes while he presses the tip of each digit to the pad of his thumb. One, two, three, four, five. Switch hands. One, two, three, four, five. Switch. It puts them all on edge, they can all hear it. The scrape of the lines in his fingerprint, the soft thud of the impact. When Stiles counts, they all have to count with him. He has ten fingers, this is real, and everyone is still dead. 

Derek doesn’t blame Stiles. None of them do. It is clear, though, that Stiles harbors all of that guilt, keeps it close to his chest, feeds it the crumbs of his sanity until he is curled by himself during pack meetings, repeatedly tapping his goddamn fingers. Derek wants to grab him by the shoulders and yell in his face, construct a flashing neon sign that says _IT IS OK, WE ARE OK, YOU ARE OK._

But, that would be a tad hypocritical of him, wouldn’t it? After all, Derek did inadvertently kill the people who meant the most to him. He knows that Stiles thinks they all look at him the same way Derek thought Laura regarded him; while Stiles did not do it, while he was rendered helpless to the Nogitsune’s will, it still wore his face. When they think of who they lost, they see Stiles ripping them away. That is not something that can be kicked under the rug, swept away and never addressed. Derek knows that, it’s the message that was embedded in the slam of Laura’s door, the trembling in her breath. Derek is probably the only one of them who really, truly, knows that. 

Stiles drifts into fitful bouts of sleep on Derek’s couch, twitching and frowning and squeezing his eyes shut so tightly they crinkle at the edges, so tight his nose scrunches to accommodate. He whimpers and twists and shakes, and Derek isn’t sure he ever wants to see what plagues him behind closed eyes, what keeps him so tired that Derek’s scrappy loft is the only place he can rest. 

Sometimes, Derek has to fight the urge to press his thumb to the crease between Stiles’ eyebrows, smooth it out until his face slopes easy and untroubled, like it is supposed to when you sleep. Like it does for normal people. Something within him is drawn to Stiles, it always has been. Stiles softens his jagged edges, but then again, Stiles also whets them, makes them sharper. That is what a perfect balance is, Derek thinks. Someone who heightens all of your qualities, not just amplifying the positive ones. Stiles also lives in the real world, knows more about what life actually is than most people nearing the end of their own. He has no unreasonable expectations. Which, in some ways, makes Derek feel this hollow, melancholic sort of emptiness in his chest. People like Stiles are not allowed to give up. Yet, here he is, admitting defeat. It makes Derek’s skin itch.

Stiles looks at him, too. His eyes catch on Derek’s when he enters the room, his presence making him trail off mid-sentence and swallow, lips parted to cater to his slack mouth. When Derek smiles - which is not often, he can admit - Stiles’ heart speeds up. His scent goes pleasant and warm whenever he makes Derek laugh, his eyes turning to molten honey when Derek bickers back. There is certainly _something._ But, neither of them are in any place to want anything. Because, at the end of the day, Stiles still has to count his fingers and Derek still has to count on the hope that he will not walk out of this, years from now, all alone. 

One night, while Derek lies awake in his bed listening to Stiles’ ragged breathing and restless movement, Stiles screams. An agonized, terrified thing that makes Derek’s hair stand on end. But, he does not get up to check on him. He does not go to the living room. Because that couch has become Stiles’ safe space, and Derek does not want to overstep his boundaries. He knows what it feels like when everyone is always expecting you to fall apart. 

He waits. Watches the blades of his ceiling fan spin around, slow, so slow, the air around him echoing with Stiles’ labored breaths, his racing heart. Derek fists his hands into the sheets to keep himself in place. 

Eventually, after it feels like years have passed, the door creaks and Stiles steps in on sock-soft feet. He’s looking anywhere but at Derek. He rubs the back of his neck, heaves a sigh, and pads over to the side of the bed. Derek wordlessly eases over, smooths the covers back and says nothing while Stiles insinuates himself within Derek’s space. After a while, his heart plateaus into a steady, healthy rhythm, and his scent spikes. Derek can hear it, then. One, two, three, four, five. Switch.

He remains silent, settles back down to try and sleep, every piece of him aware of Stiles, who is still sitting up. Finally, he slumps down, the mattress rocking as he gets comfortable. Then, Stiles whispers, “I’m not afraid, you know. I’m not.”

Derek sucks a deep breath in through his nose, keeping his eyes closed. He says nothing, and Stiles accepts that. He doesn’t want to say anything for fear of his voice betraying him. Because the skip of Stiles’ heart was louder than gunfire, scent lemon-sour. He’s lying. Derek stays quiet because, for both their sakes, Stiles needs to believe it. Needs to think that someone else believes it. When Derek finally feels like he has a grip on reality, when he thinks Stiles has settled down enough to be okay, he just says, “I am not afraid, either.”

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on [tumblr](https://iminsatiable.tumblr.com/)


End file.
